Mindworks Surrey services

  • Building Resilience -Building Resilience covers a range of community-based services offering advice, information, and help, all provided by members of the Surrey Wellbeing Partnership. 
  • Neurodevelopmental Service - This page contains information about our Neurodevelopmental Service.
  • Crisis Admission Avoidance -This service supports children and young people who are in crisis and require more intensive support.
  • Intensive Interventions - These services support young people and families who would benefit from extensive or intensive treatment. Specialist teams work with children and young people including those with eating disorders, learning difficulties, those affected by sexual trauma, or children in care.
  • School-Based Needs - Provides advice, support, and signposting for children, young people, parents/carers, and school staff, including 1-1 support and group work, both within school and out-of-school settings. Our alliance partners also offer a wide range of support in schools, this information can be found in our professionals' area.

Support available for parents/carers

  • Groups run by our partners - there is a wide range of support on offer from our partners. These include webinars, workshops, and support groups.
  • Surrey Positive Parenting - Barnardo's offers parenting groups for parents whose children have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) traits and diagnoses.
  • Family Support Service - The National Autistic Society (NAS) provides a Family Support Service to parents and carers who have received a diagnosis of autism for their child or young person (aged 0 -18 years) who live within Surrey. 
  • Hope Service parent/carer groups - Hope runs a fortnightly parent/ carer group covering a wide range of subjects.
  • Neurodevelopmental helpline - A dedicated out-of-hours helpline for parents and carers of children with suspected, or diagnosed, neurodevelopmental needs such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
  • Crisis line - Our 24-hour emotional and mental health crisis line. 
  • Family Voice Surrey - You can also contact Family Voice Surrey, a local charity that speaks up for the families of children and young people with additional needs in Surrey. They give Surrey parents a strong collective voice, a forum to share knowledge, and empowerment to improve opportunities for our children.
  • Surrey Adult Learning (SAL) - Through Surrey County Council, SAL offers a range of free parenting courses that focus on supporting your child or young person. 
  • Children and Family Health Surrey (0-19) - The Surrey-wide NHS community health and therapy service for children and young people from birth up to 19 years of age and their parents and carers. A range of guides are available including understanding your pregnancy, child, teenager, and relationships.
  • Free Online Guides about understanding your pregnancy, child, teenager, and relationships are available for families living in Surrey. The guides include top tips from childcare, education, and NHS health experts and come in text, audio, and video formats and other languages. You can get free lifetime access by using the code 'ACORN' and visiting the In our place website.
     

Information on:

The school run can be a challenging time of day. Our clinicians share their top tips for parents on managing your child's emotional wellbeing needs for the start of the school day.

  • Be prepared, logistically but also mentally and emotionally. Try to strike a balance between not thinking the worst will happen when you get to the school gate but having a plan for if you have a wobble.
  • Reflect on your own levels of anxiety about the school run and separation. Practice managing this and gradually teach your child, with mindfulness and grounding techniques and practice helpful thoughts about what the reality/likelihood is about the rest of the day.
  • Make the school run fun, play games or sing songs together.
  • If you can possibly include exercise/physicality in the journey do – walking, scooting, cycling, even some star jumps before and after getting in the car to use up nervous energy, park further away from school to walk further if it is safe to do so.
  • If your child has a special interest try and relate the journey or the goodbye to this i.e. role play.
  • Have a prepared script for saying goodbye and stick to this. Invite your child to write their part. Don’t make it too long or drawn out. A short, simple, fun and loving ritual makes goodbye enjoyable and no big deal.
  • If your child likes to have some control give them two choices of what you’ll do on the journey and on what kind of goodbye you’ll have. No more than two. Tell them the options if they are too anxious to think of ideas themselves.
  • Make a time for worry time (talk time) after school for a limited time of 15 minutes every day, same time every day. This way if worries are brought up on route to school, before leaving the house or at bedtime as a way of stalling you can remind your child that you have worry time so you can make sure you can talk about it then.
  • Work with the school if the drop off/goodbye is difficult. Perhaps make a plan together if necessary, could the same member of staff greet your child every morning and help them transition in.
  • Books like The Invisible String are helpful for reading with children.

Recommended books for parenting interventions

  • Helping Your Child with Fears and Worries 2nd Edition: A Self-help Guide for Parents (2019) by Cathy Creswell and Lucy Willetts (for primary aged anxiety).

  • The Incredible Years (2006) by Carolyn Webster-Stratton (for primary aged behaviour management)

Other helpful organisations

These are run by third-party organisations and we do not monitor their content or are responsible for the advice and guidance that is given.